He was off the porch in an instant, running softly, lightly, with hardly a breath or a heartbeat, as one barefooted runs, as one all leaf and green June grass and night can run, all shadow, forever running, away from the silent house and across the street, and down into the ravine . . .
He pushed the door wide and stepped into the Owl Diner, this long railroad car that, removed from its track, had been put to a solitary unmoving destiny in the center of town. The place was empty.
At the far end of the counter, the counterman glanced up as the door shut and the customer walked along the line of empty swivel seats. The counterman took the toothpick from his mouth.
“Tom Dillon, you old so-and-so! What you doing up this time of night, Tom?”
Tom Dillon ordered without the menu. While the food was being prepared, he dropped a nickel in the wall phone, got his number, and spoke quietly for a time. He hung up, came back, and sat, listening. Sixty seconds later, both he and the counterman heard the police siren wail by at fifty miles an hour. “Well—hell!” said the counterman. “Go get ’em, boys!”
He set out a tall glass of milk and a plate of six fresh graham crackers.
Tom Dillon sat there for a long while, looking secretly down at his ripped trousers turn-up and muddied shoes. The light in the diner was raw and bright, and he felt as if he were on a stage.
He held the tall cool glass of milk in his hand, sipping it, eyes shut, chewing the good texture of the graham crackers, feeling it all through his mouth, coating his tongue.
“Would or would you not,” he asked, quietly, “call this a hearty meal?”
“I’d call that very hearty indeed,” said the counterman, smiling.
Tom Dillon chewed another graham cracker with great concentration, feeling all of it in his mouth. It’s just a matter of time, he thought, waiting.
“More milk?”
“Yes,” said Tom.
And he watched with steady interest, with the purest and most alert concentration in all of his life, as the white carton tilted and gleamed, and the snowy milk poured out, cool and quiet, like the sound of a running spring at night, and filled the glass up all the way, to the very brim, to the very brim, and over . . .
The End
